The Third Law of Performance: Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people

The Third Law gives us the power to create results. As we learned in the First Law of Performance, “How people perform correlates to how situations occur for them,” and the Second Law of Performance, “How a situation occurs arises in language.” Then, the Third Law gives us the power to change how situations occur to us through the use of language.

However, what’s so powerful about the Third Law is the use of future-based language, not just language in general. “Future-based language does not describe how a situation occurs; it transforms how it occurs. It does this by rewriting the future.” In my introduction to this book I discussed the difference between the default and created future. The created future is one that we invent ourselves, and we can do so with language.

It seems so simple. However, using future-based language is extremely difficult to do if you are constantly speaking from your default future. “You can’t paint a picture on top of a picture on a canvas. You can’t write a sentence on a page that is filled up with writing. You can’t create a future when there is already one coming at you. Before anything is to be created, there has to be a space of nothingness” (p. 73-74).

Zaffron and Logan spend a good chunk of the next chapter teaching the reader how to create a place of complete nothingness. The rest of the book (about 100 pages) dives into the power of future-based language and the importance of rewriting your default future.

Now that you have had the chance to read about each of the the Three Laws you might be asking yourself, “Is there any point in reading the book?” I definitely recommend it. The Three Laws of Performance is filled with some phenomenal examples of groups and organizations who have created breakthrough life-altering results thanks to the tools described in this book. I did my best to summarize my main “takeaways” however, I know that there is so much more to be learned from this book! I would hear your thoughts and feedback after reading it.

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